Paris
By: Maarten Vande Wiele, Erika Raven, Peter Moerenhout
Publisher: Knockabout Comics
Release Date: Out nowReview:This fabulously eye-catching collection from Knockabout combines both of Vande Wiele’s graphic novels: I Love Paris, scripted by Erika Raven, and I Hate Paris, scripted by Peter Moerenhout. Billed as “the very first graphic trash novel in the universe”, the book stars three fashionistas in search of fame and fortune in the French capital. The humour here is very black indeed, as Hope, Faith, and Chastity all struggle to fulfil their dreams, and pay the price that fame demands. Be warned, there are some uncomfortable scenes, but Paris is aimed squarely at satirising the glamorous façade of beauty.

That said, the art is wonderfully chic, and I would hope to see this widely reviewed in the fashion magazines.

Ah, capricious whimsy at its finest as our three heroines Chastity, Hope and Faith set out to find fame and fortune in that most chic of cities, and whilst they might be named after virtues, these ladies will do pretty much whatever it takes to try and succeed. Initially at least, I thought that Hope, a beautiful girl left with ugly scarring on one side of her face after a car accident as a small child in which she also lost her mother, was intended to be the moral rock around which the story would be built; for upon arriving in the big city as a naïve, sensitive soul and hiding her scars beneath her locks, she seems immune to the insidious moral corruption that is utterly prevalent almost everywhere she turns.

Her two roommates Chastity, a party girl who’s determined to sleep her way to the easy life whilst acquiring more than a few column inches in the gossip magazines along the way, and Faith, a singer harbouring dreams of the big time who’ll stab absolutely anyone in the back, repeatedly, to get even a centimetre ahead, are two beautifully observed examples of the modern airhead wannabes and two-a-penny manufactured muso-clones that currently clutter the social landscape like so much detritus.

However, as the story progresses and Hope experiences an unexpected breakthrough into the world of modelling, and is then offered the opportunity to have plastic surgery to fix her imperfection to become a truly unblemished beauty, she inevitably succumbs to the temptations and ego-titillations that accompany such success. From that point on, it’s no longer a question of whether she’ll fall, just how far she’ll drop and how fast she’ll be travelling when she hits rock bottom. It’s going to hurt…

Chastity and Faith meanwhile are also finding that the road to wealth and fame isn’t always straightforward, and that sometimes you’ll need to sell your soul, not just your body (though that goes without saying) just to survive and stay in the game. It’s almost like a fairy tale in reverse really, which is a pretty chilling allegory that the myriad fame-hungry never-will-be suckers of our modern world – who are only too happy to humiliate themselves for the chattering classes’ televisual entertainment on increasingly absurd reality shows – would do well to pay attention to. If they could read, that is.

I think the scariest part is whilst it would be easy to conclude the story here is unrealistically dramatic, I actually suspect it’s pretty much bang on the money, which of course makes it all the more enticing a read, as whilst I’m usually a sucker for a happy ending, I, like pretty much all of us normal people if we’re honest, enjoy watching a good celebrity meltdown in full car-crash effect. Yes, they may be people underneath it all, but they’re celebrities first and foremost, so one can’t help fell they do probably deserve it. At least a little bit…

The art, by one of the three collaborating writers, has a lovely, swooshy, vogue-ish feel to it that really does put you in mind of sashaying catwalk models and blinged-up sparkly darlings all mwah-mwah air-kissing away. In other words, he’s captured the utter vacuousness of their illusory world to perfection. An unexpected guilty pleasure this work turned out to be then, much like reading a gossip magazine, only infinitely more satisfying.